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…Hunting, Training, and Testing…
Rough Shooting South Dakota Pheasants
By Chris Zell
'Well I've never seen that at a hunt test before' went through my mind as I watched Lucy, my little black and white Springer, disappear into a 50 foot deep wall of South Dakota cattails. It was opening day of the 2005 pheasant season, and in the midst of heavy shooting our party had dropped five roosters into their preferred mid-afternoon habitat…shallow water cattails and canary grass next to recently picked corn. I figured that after a few 'hunt dead' casts, we would have our quarry collected from the swamp and move on to finish our limit. In fact I was so confident in our dogs abilities I was already thinking about the early festivities that followed early limits. Well, I was wrong…
Included among our contingent of dog power was Lucy, a younger ESS bitch experiencing her fourth South Dakota pheasant season. Lucy has Hunt Test passes in AKC Master and UKC seasoned (retriever) events. With these accomplishments in mind, I figured that we'd be ok with about anything that my home state 'ditch parrots' could throw at us. To start things off, regardless of the urgent requests I made of my dog to 'get back' and 'find it' Lucy was unable to punch deep enough into the cattails to get into where five roosters had fallen. Knowing how losing downed game would pretty much ruin our day, I resigned myself to go where my dog would not. After about ten feet into the cattails, I soon gained an understanding of how a birdy dog would come up short in that mess. In addition to the water being cold and deep, the cover was very dense, and about every twenty to thirty feet to my side I could see clumps of overgrown humps of grass that previously hosted roosting pheasants, as evidenced by small depressions and scat.
So, here I am asking my 35 lb dog to swim through 50 - 70' of cover I can barely wade through, in a straight line, amidst a relatively heavy concentration of fresh pheasant scent. As the cold water crept up my thighs and the wonderful anaerobic smell of swamp ooze erased the earthy autumn perfume, I began asking myself why didn't I train for this, I know better! I've been chasing roosters for fifteen years, this isn't surprising!!!
I continued to creep deeper into the swamp, finally seeing where one of the pheasants went down from the concentration of feathers hanging in the brush. I called Lucy to me, who was swimming behind me as I broke a path through the hiding jungle. I announced 'find it' and stood there (well chilled at this point) to watch the scene unfold. I hoped that Lucy would generalize a command, usually given on land to track a cripple, while swimming. Following a foray near the edge of open water, Lucy proceeded to zig-zag as she crossed open water to the opposite cattail edge. In she went followed by a hissing and splashing that I really haven't heard for a long time. I knew at that point we had recovered one of our birds. Out she came, pheasant wing covering her eyes as she did her best to echo-locate the guy who expected her to do this all on her own! There I stood, a little over waist deep in prairie pothole, trying to figure out how Lucy was going to give me the bird without taking on water. As she neared me she placed her from feet on my stomach (which at this point in my life looks regrettably shelf-like) and dropped the bird on my chest. Off we went again, one of us swimming, the other wading, finding two more still alive roosters, all of them 20 to 40 yards from where they fell.
As we begrudgingly came back to shore two birds short of what we went in for, I sat down to drain the water from my socks and have a granola bar. I was getting near the end of my bar, the portion that usually is rewarded to my four-legged buddy, when to my surprise Lucy is shuffling between other members with a pheasant and looking for the right person to give it to. Ultimately, she gave it to my brother in-law before I could get her attention. As my brother in-law walked over, he handed me the still wet pheasant. Being more concerned with dryness than keeping track of Lucy I had not watched where she went. Nobody did. No one heard any further splashing either. Presuming the bird dropped near the others, it would have had to swim toward, between, and eventually run behind the hunting party in order for no splashing to be heard. I guess I'll never know. We never did find the final bird we dropped and so counted it against our limit and headed for the trucks.
What I was reminded of, again, that day is that what looks good during testing scenarios and typical training scenarios will not always get it done when hunting wild pheasants in wild cover. Before some of you get to thinking I'm casting disparaging stones at our testing format, I'm not. Some skills and skill-sets can be tested efficiently and some cannot. Worthwhile discussing are a few training concepts that I will be focusing on in the coming months to better perform in the world above the trial and testing ground.
Taking a line, both as marks and blind retrieves, through barriers and heavy cover changes generally turns out to be one of the deciding factors in coming up with wild birds. Pheasants are an edge species and generally by the time they are flushed and retrieved, our pups will need to go through at least one significant edge or cover change, sometimes more. Although certainly not the only way to go about it, I generally teach retrieving concepts first as a thrown retrieve and then gradually progress to cold blinds. A good test of where we are with this concept would be a cold blind retrieve through a 10 -20 yd wide strip of unpicked corn at a forty-five degree angle.
The ability to track a runner is crucial in putting wild roosters in-hand. While we get to see some tracking in our hunt tests, depending on cover, climate, species, and planting technique some birds are flushed and retrieved without much tracking effort. Such is the way it goes sometimes as we can only control so many factors. To improve Lucy's tracking ability, I plan to progress from a running duck to wing-clipped pheasants. I suppose I shouldn't overdo it as I may get her too focused on foot scent.
Diversions experienced en-route to either a marked or blind retrieve seem to pop up all over the place when hunting. I can think of several times birds have flushed when on the way to a marked retrieve. In the example I talked about above, fresh scent was along both sides of the line I asked Lucy to take through the cattails. Wither it’s a flushed bird that the dog sees, one that is flushed but pup doesn't see-but hears the shot, or fresh upwind foot scent represent an en route diversion. I figure I'll start with these factors first on marks, then blind retrieves as we progress this spring.
Well, after all that, I promise I did have a great time in South Dakota. Just some things I was thinking about on the nine-hour drive home. I hope all of you that enjoy spending time with your dogs get a chance to put your pup on some truly wild birds. Ed Roggenkamp has written that our pups can learn more from one week of wild pheasant hunting than a lifetime of trials and tests. While I'm not sure how all that adds up, I can sure say that the birds teach me something new every time I step foot onto the prairie.
Until Next Time,
Chris Zell
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